(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Thu 4 September 2025 7:00, UK
If there’s one thing that could never be said about Queen, it’s that they never took risks.
It’s the defining part of most biopics, as well as most recollections of how they grew to become one of the biggest rocks act in history. It’s why a track like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ turned into something untouchable…because they stuck to their guns. While the industry pushed for safe bets and radio edits, Queen doubled down on creative freedom, even when the whole world seemed to be shouting at them to play it safe.
In fact, each member took a risk every single time they went on stage and brought their vision to life before a live audience. Queen’s message wasn’t for everybody, and they even got heat for it from some of their peers. They took rock to the next level, which meant making anthems out of familiar rock traits. But it also meant breaking it down and taking on things they never thought they could.
This was the case with creating the soundtrack for the film Flash Gordon. A little outside of Queen’s usual remit, they took on the challenge and then some, deciding not only to pour everything into making it great but also to make it a real rock soundtrack that felt like watching the film whenever you’d listen to it.
In 2008, Roger Taylor told Mojo that that was their main goal: to make the first rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack, because all too often in films you would never come across rock songs. And so, for Flash Gordon, they sought to rip out the rulebook and make something people would actually remember. Without their efforts, it’s unlikely we’d have had soundtracks as iconic as ones like Pulp Fiction and other cult classics, with ‘Flash’ becoming the main touchpoint for those gritty (albeit slightly tongue-in-cheek) hit films people just keep coming back to.
Still, no matter the seamless nature of listening to ‘Flash’ or any other parts of the soundtrack, things almost fell apart before they even got started. They each went away with the goal of coming back with something the others believed in, and when they did, producer Dino De Laurentiis wasn’t so sure. He’d like what they did with it, but he wasn’t entirely sure it was for Flash Gordon. At first, anyway.
The thing is, the others really liked it. Director Mike Hodges even apparently jumped up and down when he heard it, yelling, “It’s brilliant, it’s brilliant!” But that clash mainly came from the two of them having different opinions on the tone of the film itself; Hodges seeing it as some sort of “spoof”, and Laurentiis thinking it needed to be far more serious. Hence why, when they presented what they’d made, Laurentiis uttered a downbeat, “It’s very good, but it is not for my movie”.
According to May, they all got a bit “glum” after that. But the time away from Laurentiis was seemingly enough for Hodges to get him to come around. “What I think happened was Mike went to Dino and said: ‘You got to have faith here. This is something that is going to work and Brian has actually captured the essence of the movie in this piece of music,’” May told The Independent in 2012.
Continuing, “But it was a big adventure in those days. I don’t think there had ever been a feature film with background music done by a rock band before – it was a real dangerous departure. You had to have your base of strings to create emotion. It had never been done. And to his credit, Dino did come around and was very supportive.”
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